LPD6803 LED Strip Fire effect HELP!!!

Using Arduino Programming Questions
#1

Hi all,

I am in a bit of a pickle. I helped my girlfriend install 15' of LPD6803 LED Strip into a lighted prop. Now the only problem is that I know next to nothing about coding for this particular chip and need to have a generic flame effect working for her by Saturday the 11th. (as a side note, I want to add a button to change the effect from fire to a rainbow type sequence but for now, just getting the fricken flame look would be a blessings from the Arduino gods). I plan to power the strip separate from the board and use an Arduino Uno to send the Data. I have tried numerous existing example programs and have downloaded all the libraries I could find and have had been unsuccessful in getting any type of reaction from the lights at all. Does anyone know what direction I should try and go with this?

Any help would be immensely appreciated. Please be mindful that my knowledge of Arduino is basic but if I have another avenue to explore or example code to use I would give it 110%!

#2

the problem is that you are using outdated strips... fastLed doesn't support lpd6803s

look for the fastSpi library, that will control 6803s.

what have you done so far?

#3

I have been using the fastspi library with the example code "testled"

I am having trouble finding the clock and data pins, I believe it is Pin11 and pin13 from what I read on the web but I am not sure. I have uploaded the code to the board changing the .setchipset to the LPD6803 as shown below:

FastSPI_LED.setLeds(NUM_LEDS); //FastSPI_LED.setChipset(CFastSPI_LED::SPI_SM16716); //FastSPI_LED.setChipset(CFastSPI_LED::SPI_TM1809); FastSPI_LED.setChipset(CFastSPI_LED::SPI_LPD6803); //FastSPI_LED.setChipset(CFastSPI_LED::SPI_HL1606); //FastSPI_LED.setChipset(CFastSPI_LED::SPI_595); //FastSPI_LED.setChipset(CFastSPI_LED::SPI_WS2801);

Is that correct?

I'm not sure if using the LPD6803 requires me to make changes to the stock example code or not..

And many thanks for your reply :)

#4